When Hurricane Katrina brought storm surges crashing into New Orleans in August 2005, Beverly Wright lost all her family photographs, going back to her great grandparents, in the flood.
When Hurricane Katrina brought storm surges crashing into New Orleans in August 2005, Beverly Wright lost all her family photographs, going back to her great grandparents, in the flood.
“You cannot replace all of the memorabilia, or pictures you cherish and pass on from person to person,” said the executive director of the Deep South Centre for Environmental Justice. “There are things that cannot be replaced monetarily.” She gave this as an example of “loss and damage” from climate change, and told journalists at the UN climate change talks in Paris that experts are still figuring out how to address people’s loss of homes, community culture and family stability after they are hit by extreme weather or rising seas. New Orleans has changed since the Katrina disaster, she said. Some black households forced to flee their homes are still trying to go back but rents are now too high and public education can be difficult to access, she said. In the climate negotiations, there is still a lack of clarity on what “loss and damage” is, and how to resolve it. Humanitarian agencies say loss and damage is the harm that occurs when stresses made worse by global warming — such as prolonged droughts and melting glaciers — are too severe for people to overcome.
“For too long, reducing emissions and scaling up adaptation support has been hopelessly inadequate,” said Sandeep Chamling Rai, an adaptation expert with green group WWF. Meanwhile, Honduras, Myanmar and Haiti top a new list of nations hardest hit by two decades of storms, floods and landslides that killed more than half a million people, climate analysts reported Thursday, warning of more frequent disasters if Earth’s overheating cannot be tamed.
Scientists point to the mounting threat from storms, floods, droughts and rising seas if mankind cannot brake emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, especially from fossil fuels. The Bonn-based advocacy group Germa-nwatch released the 2016 Global Climate Risk Index showing those nations most affected by the direct consequences of extreme weather events.
